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Civil Religion and Original Sin
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
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Original sin, nowadays is usually not welcomed by most Christians of Western culture. Religious traditions on original sin are felt to be uncomfortably strange in our society where people, by common consent, see themselves so unconnected to others that the actions of one person are supposed to leave other people untouched. Such cultural agreement is at the roots of a society that believes every person is free and able to achieve whatever he/she wants. Since original sin doctrines clearly deny such “unconnectedness”, no wonder they are often rejected and reduced to a teaching as simplistic as “a spot on a child’s soul!” This articles suggests that original sin traditions can speak to our contemporary culture, challenge some of its deepest presuppositions, and lead to new levels of awareness of what it means to be Christian in today’s world.
To understand the meaning of doctrines which are expressed in what anthropologists call mythical tales or myths, it is relevant to recognize the different representations of the world which flow from different mythical tales, and the effects of those different representations. I submit that a doctrine as “religious” as Original Sin says a lot about how we envision the civil organization of society. Furthermore, the present disregard for this doctrine is related to social and political respresentations. I will thus compare the basic assumptions of the original sin myth with another set of assumptions, those underlying the individualistic world view which is sometimes summarized in-another myth: the civil religion of free enterprise.
Various interpretations of original sin have attempted to articulate individual and collective dimensions of the sinful condition. These interpretations at the same time propose diverse understandings of the relationship between history and our present actions. Classical Catholicism seems to identify original sin with the tendency of each individual toward selfishness and personal aggrandizement.
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- Copyright © 1982 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Many recent biblical and theological studies show how uncomfortable Christians feel with respect to doctrines concerning original sin. For example, Schoonenberg, Piet: Man and Sin. University of N D Press, 1965Google Scholar; Flick, M. and Alszeghi, Z., Il peccuto originale. Brescia, 1972Google Scholar; Vanneste, A., Le dogme du péhé originel. Louvain, 1971Google Scholar; Bauman, U.. Erbünde? Freiburg, 1970Google Scholar; Watté, P., Structures ohilosophiques du Péché originel, Gembloux. 1974Google Scholar; Labourdette, M., in Revue Thomist 1970, pp 277–291 and 1973, pp 643–664Google Scholar; Duquoc, Ch., “New Approaches to Original Sin”, Cross Currents, 28. 2, pp 189–200, 1978.Google Scholar
2 Cf Lawler, M. G., Christian Rituals: an essay in Sacramental Symbolism, Horizons 1980 pp 7–36Google Scholar.
3 A question could be raised: “Docs the present disregard for the original sin doctrine originate from its oddity in our culture or from challenging theological studies?” I believe that, from a sociological point of view the answer is clear: theological interest generally results from cultural disregard and does not precede it.
4 The concept of civil religion has been defined in many ways. The following definition by J. A. Coleman in Theology in the Americas, Orbis Books, 1976 (Ed. S. Torres and J. Eagleson), seems to me helpful: “If you like, civil religion is the mystic chord of communal memory (always being summoned to reinterpretation in the face of new historic task)Which ties together both a nation's citizenry and the episodes of its history into a meaningful identity by using significant national beliefs, events, persons, places, or documents to serve as symbolic repositories of the special vocational significance of the nationstate in the light of a more Illtimate or transcendent bar of judgment, ethical ideals, humanity, world history, being, the universe, or God”.
5 Op. Cit. p 174.
6 I analyse here the “free enterprise” ideology mainly as it functions now and not as it did when it was the moving legitimation in those who rebelled against the feudal system in Europe.
7 Such political interpretations of original sin have become familiar to political theologians, e.g. D. Soelle, Political Theology, Fortress Press, 1974, pp 86–89.
8 The concept of transmission of original sin by physical birth has its roots in St Augustine. However, the Augustine theory is very far from the populaized theology of the 20th century which tends to reduce the transmission to an individualistic biological event. Previously, a biological event was always also viewed as a cosmic and a societal one.
9 Obviously the same doctrine of original sin would also be subversive for a communist society that would pretend to be perfectly well organized. There is however, some congeniality between the concepts of “original sin” and of “class struggle”. Both notions refer to the belief that before some “eschatological” event (the kingdom or the final revolution), the world will never be free of contradictions and oppression. (And actually both the Church and the Party are sometimes tempted to believe that they are the eschaton).
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